Willem Bruin

“The aim of personalized medicine is to tailor the best therapeutic strategy for the right person. However, there are currently no reliable markers to personalize treatment for many psychiatric disorders. Previous studies have shown that machine learning based pattern recognition techniques could be useful to automatically classify neuroimaging scans and aid predict treatment outcome. The first objective of this project is to develop a neuroimaging biomarker for treatment selection in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The second objective of this study is to develop a biomarker that can predict treatment response to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in patients suffering from depression. The methods and results of this project may open up new opportunities for science and medicine, provide a template for the discovery of other neuroimaging biomarkers in neurology and psychiatry, and may initiate a change towards personalized treatment in psychiatry by bringing neuroimaging biomarkers to the clinic to decrease disease burden and medical costs.”